This is about buzz.
The natural resources audience wants buzz. These are the folks we used to call Joe & Josephine Hybrid when I was cobbling together MarketWatch.com for garage-loft investors (1996 to 2004).
The hybrids are investors Al & Ronnie Mardens in Las Vegas, for instance; or Mike Riegelman in Boston; or Bob Havlik in Toronto. They go to the head of the class, along with many hundreds of others in the Ticker Trax crowd, for their diligence in rooting out cheap and/or actionable resources equities.
“There are so many folks out there looking for the easy score,” Mike R., a technology salesman, tells us over a recent dinner. “So you have to differentiate yourself – understand what’s good buzz and what’s for buzzards. That takes focus, a lot of reading.”
Here is today’s buzz. It comes up all ONES given the date this 11th day of January ’11.
- Buzz: Michael Nikiforuk’s African Gold (TSX: V.AGG, Stock Forum) is getting his West Africa prospector prepared for the next round in the small company’s entry to one-dollar equities. He and his team of Mali and Ghana geologists are preparing for tours of the company’s Kobada, Mali, and Asankrangwa, Ghana, properties. I hope to partake.
- Buzz: The lithium conference scheduled for next week in Toronto will manufacture plenty of it. One company that will attend is Luis Saenz’s Chile lithium prospector Li3 Energy (OTC:BB: LIEG, Stock Forum). Luis Saenz tells me from Lima, Peru, that its Maricunga Project is assaying samples. “Our guys at Maricunga are happy with the sampling … we expect to send 100 or more samples to a lab, two labs … and results back sometime this month,” he says. Li3’s banker, Carlos A. Zalles in Italy at LW Investment Management, tells me Maricunga is the seventh largest lithium brine deposit in the world. I do not own any shares of USA-traded LIEG.
- Other critical and alloy metals are getting buzz, among them scandium, tellurium, tantalum, molybdenum and of course, the 17 heavy rare-earth elements that power handheld devices, disk drives, power plants, pipelines, solar panels and so on. One of the industry conferences is on my radar screen: The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition’s winter membership meeting in San Diego next week. “I think branding of metals producers will become more of an issue in coming years as manufacturers start monitoring behavior in various jurisdictions,” says Eric Kohn, Switzerland-based chairman of Noventa Ltd. (TSX: T.NTA, Stock Forum). Noventa is a London-traded producer of Mozambique tantalum, and its shares listed about a week ago on the Toronto Stock Exchange. I came across the company in a search for Africa specialty metals producers for my own portfolio and for Ticker Trax subscribers. I now own US$26,000 worth of NTA. Tantalum, along with vanadium, tungsten and molybdenum, is used as an alloying agent with stainless and other steels. The element has high capacitance and is usedin capacitors for mobile electronics.
- The EICC membership list is a Who’s Who of technology and software developers. The EICC helps to set standards for proper conduct in all areas of the electronic global supply chain. It is governed this year by executives from IBM (NYSE: IBM, Stock Forum), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC, Stock Forum), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL, Stock Forum), Jabil (NYSE: JBL, Stock Forum), Flextronics (NASDAQ: FLEX, Stock Forum) and others. Conduct and operations themes soon might carry as much impact in the world of specialty metals as the China strategic resource measures are levying now on the trade of some elements. I think we’ll see metals prospectors and producers from North America, Chile, Africa, China and elsewhere attending this thing and considering conduct codes for their operations.
- On the investment side of the January shows, there is this one in less than two weeks in Vancouver: the Critical Metals Investment Symposium. That event will be followed by the Vancouver Investment Conference. The Cambridge House event comes just as the Minerals Round-Up for geologists starts that same week of January 24 in Vancouver, Canada. Please seethe Cambridge speakers’ agenda. Companies I hope to catch up on there include Michael Nikiforuk’s African Gold Group; Glen Watson’s La Quinta Resources (TSX: V.LAQ, Stock Forum), an early-stage Nevada gold prospector; Philippine Metals (TSX: V.PHI, Stock Forum); John Carter’s Trueclaim Exploration (TSX: V.TRM, Stock Forum) in Ontario and Arizona; and Thomas Klein’s Golden Phoenix Minerals (OTC: BB: GPXM, Stock Forum) in Ontario, Nevada and Peru. I own none of these shares.
- We’re watching Brad Cooke’s Canarc Resources (TSX: T.CCM, Stock Forum),a Yukon and British Columbia, Canada, prospector long in tooth and finally shedding years of sloth. I do not own Canarc shares. Please see our coveragevia Stockhouse. The stock has doubled in three weeks. Mr. Cooke says this now-Nevada operator, assuming a pending transaction in that gold and silver-rich state closes, will be producing gold for sale within one year or less. Brad also has a vested interest in Caza Gold (TSX: V.CZY, Stock Forum), which is operating in Mexico and Nicaragua; and he heads up Mexico’s Endeavour Silver (AMEX: EXK, Stock Forum) and (TSX: T.EDR, Stock Forum) – this last a company I have tracked for 30 months and of which I own shares.
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THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Trax helps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom was founding editor of MarketWatch, CBS MarketWatch and FT MarketWatch. He was the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report. Thom has been covering life-sciences and natural resources since 1988.
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